LAPD: 5 arrested in connection with USC killing

LOS ANGELES >> Two men and two juveniles arrested in the beating death of a USC graduate student from China allegedly committed another robbery at Dockweiler Beach later that day, police said Monday.

Investigators arrested the men Thursday following the crime at Dockweiler, a beach that runs from El Segundo to Playa del Rey, and tied them to the crime near USC, Los Angeles police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said.

Jonathan DelCarmen, 19, and Andrew Garcia, 18, are suspected of robbing and beating 24-year-old Xinran Ji about 12:45 a.m. Thursday near 29th Street and Orchard Avenue. A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl also were arrested in connection with the crime, police said.

DelCarmen was booked on suspicion of murder, while the other three suspects were held on suspicion of murder, assault with a deadly weapon and robbery.

A 14-year-old girl also was taken into custody, but the extent of her alleged involvement in the killing was not immediately known, police said. She was held on suspicion of the separate robbery.

The names of the juveniles were not released because of their ages.

Ji, an electrical engineering graduate student, walked back to his City Park apartment in the 1200 block of West 30th Street, where he was found dead about 7 a.m. A trail of blood marked the path he walked.

Investigators believe that after attacking Ji, the group went to Dockweiler Beach and committed another robbery, Smith said.

“Two men at that point were taken into custody and throughout the rest of the day the detectives from Pacific Area were able to follow up and take more people into custody,” Smith said. “So a total of five people were taken into custody following the robbery over in the Pacific Area.’’

Smith would not give specifics about how the suspects were connected to Ji’s death, but he hinted that surveillance cameras and other crime-fighting technology played a role.

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“The technology that the University of Southern California and Los Angeles Police Department have invested in this area has gone a long way toward helping us solve this crime,’’ Smith said.

With the attack again raising questions about safety on the outskirts of the USC campus, Smith said the department was “taking a look at all of our efforts, all of our technology, all of our deployment efforts, all of our personnel efforts in the USC area to do everything we can to ensure that things are safe for students at USC and to try and prevent any incident like this from ever happening again.’’

LAPD Lt. Andy Neiman said last week Ji was struck with an unknown type of “blunt-force object.’’ Ji had apparently been with a study group and had just walked a friend home before heading toward his own apartment when the attack occurred.

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering was expected to hold a memorial service for Ji later this week.